


a soft epilogue

by outwardbound93



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5932666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outwardbound93/pseuds/outwardbound93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn draws back into the living room of their tiny two-bedroom walk-up. Sometimes Niall wonders why he ever signed that lease with Zayn in the middle of finals his first semester of uni. Other times, like now, with Zayn nervously swallowing his fear and shouldering the door open, he remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. chapter i

Niall tries going in sideways. He tries using a stepstool, then he tries just, like, lifting himself from the porcelain bog into the steaming hot water. Finally, he gives up. “Zayn,” he calls.

Zayn’s muffled voice comes through the door a moment later, like he’d been waiting nearby. “Yeah, mate?”

Niall gives himself five long seconds to rethink this. Then he gives himself three more, because he can’t think of another way out. Finally, he says, “Can you come in?”

Zayn edges the door open an inch; all Niall can see of him is his voluminous quiff. Then he edges further in. He spots Niall sat on the cold toilet lid and he flushes, casting his eyes up to the ceiling. “You’re naked, love,” he says, sounding strangled.

“Yeah,” Niall admits. He sounds a little like he’s admitting that Derby hasn’t won the league, or like when he has to tell Bobby that he didn’t properly marinate his steaks before he grilled them. “Can you help me?”

“With being naked?” Zayn asks, his wide brown eyes roving up to the ceiling. Niall watches his Adam’s apple bob when he swallows.

“No, with getting into the tub.”

Zayn frowns, and suddenly he’s able to meet Niall’s eyes. “You can’t stand up? Your knee’s that bad?”

“No,” Niall says. _Yes,_ he means. “I just can’t, like, lower myself in, and I’m afraid of falling.”

“We should’ve got one of them, like, paralyzed person arm hold things,” Zayn says, making a gesture that looks vaguely like jerking himself off. Niall would know. He’s seen Zayn make that gesture at Louis at least twice every Sunday morning for brunch for the past three semesters. “Y’know?”

“No,” Niall says, to be a prat.

“You don’t have to be a prat,” Zayn says mildly. He drops his arm. “I know you know.”

Niall says, “I smell like hospital. Can you please just help me get in the tub so I can wash it off?”

Zayn draws back into the living room of their tiny two-bedroom walk-up. Sometimes Niall wonders why he ever signed that lease with Zayn in the middle of finals his first semester of uni. Other times, like now, with Zayn nervously swallowing his fear and shouldering the door open, he remembers. Zayn heroically keeps his eyes on the ceiling until he walks into Niall’s knees, and then he springs back. He shoots Niall a desperately apologetic look.

“‘S okay,” says Niall, who has never seen Zayn move that fast before. “Got me good one.”

“Warn me next time,” Zayn says. Zayn’s skin doesn’t pink up the way Niall’s does when he gets embarrassed, but he’s dead obvious anyway. Zayn sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and fidgets with the cigarette stowed above his right ear, and the fingertips of his other hand dance against his leg. “So, how d’you wanna, y’know?”

Niall looks up at him. “I think you should carry me, bridal-style.”

Zayn blanches. “I don’t know that I, uh,” he flexes his birdlike arms.

Niall laughs. “‘Course not, idiot. Just, like, hold my arm for balance.” Naturally, Zayn tries to help Niall stand up – he can do _this_ much by himself, thanks – and then he grips Niall under his arm while Niall grapples with lifting his leg and carrying himself into their vintage claw-foot tub. He’d had an idea, when they moved in, of having a proper sexy moment in this tub, like in that movie with Angelina Jolie and the guy who voices Puss in Boots.

He’d been quite alright with being either of them in that scenario, actually. Now he’d give anything for the shoddy tub back home in his Dad’s house, where he and Sean once washed Sean’s giant sheepdog. His dad made him bleach the bathroom, the dog had made such a mess of it, and then they never could quite get the weed smell out of his fur from sleeping on top of Sean’s dirty laundry.

“Okay,” Niall says, when he’s got one leg fully in the tub and the other up. “Almost –” But Zayn dropped his arm, and when he realizes he’s left Niall in the precarious position of either cracking his head on the side of the tub or on the tile floor of their bathroom, he rushes back in. Niall seizes his sleeve and clutches him close, and Zayn loses his balance. They both crash into the bathtub, Niall’s head tucked protectively against Zayn’s bony sternum.

Niall pulls back to look at Zayn’s expression. His hair drips down his face, and his clothes are soaked all the way through. The floor of their bathroom is soaked with bathwater. The hot water gets to work right away draining Niall of the tension of being sent to hospital, of another round of nerve-wracking X-rays. One of these days, he knows, they’ll have to cut into him to fix what’s wrong.

For now, he has Zayn tossing his head back in laughter. He pushes himself back till he’s leaning against the side of the tub opposite Niall, who just raises an eyebrow when Zayn shucks his shirt. His tattoos are less noticeable underwater, like maybe they were only ever temporary, or like his skin has absorbed them.

“What’s this, then?” Niall asks.

“What?” Zayn asks innocently. “I can’t enjoy a soak, too? After I worked so hard to get you in here?”

Niall inches a little lower into the tub, Zayn’s eyes flicking over the round muscles of his shoulders and the sharp angles of his collarbones. When Zayn meets his gaze again, there’s nothing repentant about him, just fondness. Just that look he wears every time Niall brings back their minted hangover cure of takeaway tacos with extra sour cream, or when Niall throws Zayn’s laundry in with his own.

Grudgingly, Niall knows he wouldn’t have managed to get in here at all if not for Zayn. Even if he did drop him. Niall can still feel Zayn’s slender artist’s hands on the side of his head, protecting him from the side of the tub.

“Alright,” Niall says. “But I’m not shampooing your hair for you.”

“Yes, you are,” Zayn says placidly. He plucks his spare cigarette, miraculously undamaged, from behind his ear.

“No, ‘m not,” Niall insists, basking in the relaxing warmth of his nice hot bath.

He shampoos Zayn’s hair for him.


	2. chapter ii

Niall hangs his snapback up on the coatrack Zayn salvaged from the sidewalk last year when all they had in their apartment was the tatty couch Ant let Zayn have for half a bag of weed and the promise to give Doniya his number (he didn’t), and then he sets his backpack on one of the mismatched chairs at their IKEA dining table.

He’s always liked having it in that spot, like his backpack is some kind of guest, albeit one weighing forty pounds and consisting entirely of textbooks and his battered Chromebook. Anyway, it helps to rehearse his environmental law case summaries on the backpack, which won’t get so fed up that it starts throwing pens and pencils at him like Zayn has.

“Zayn?” he calls. He’d stopped by the student union building after his last class for a Chik-Fil-A sandwich but they put pickles on it, so he’s brought it home for Zayn.

“Here,” Zayn answers from Niall’s room. He sounds almost as miserable as the time he put his thrift store leather jacket down in paint, before he realized it looked better like that.

Niall pokes his head into his own room. Zayn’s stood in front of Niall’s closet wearing his own skinny trousers, a Rams jersey, and Niall’s old blazer from high school graduation. It strains at his shoulders, and Zayn presses his thumb against the lip print tat on his breastbone. “Help,” he says, rather pitifully.

“Brought you a sandwich,” Niall says. Figures it’s best to start with something solid. Zayn flaps his hand as if to say _Not now._ “I like this look,” Niall starts, sinking onto his bed. “It’s a little David Beckham meets Sporty Spice.”

Zayn pads into the bathroom to look, a hopeful expression on his face. 

“I look like Rihanna before she hit puberty,” he shouts.

Niall, flat on his back on his bed, now, snorts a laugh. He sits back up in time to watch Zayn return to Niall’s room with Niall’s jersey tangled up on his head and in his necklaces. “What’s this about, anyway?” Niall asks, plucking a loose thread on his duvet.

If Zayn’s planning to go on a date later, he better decide quick what to wear, Niall thinks. His hair is still loose around his face, and if Niall squints, his head kind of looks like the pot boiling over with sugar water that time Holly tried to make licorice. Zayn picks up Niall’s sandwich, takes a distracted bite, and then sets it down on top of Niall’s broken Nintendo 64.

“Can’t be that hard to get laid,” Niall reasons, so that he’ll stop thinking about the stick of rubbery candy he made himself eat so Holly wouldn’t feel bad. Tasted like burnt rubber. “With a face like yours, I mean.”

Zayn shoots Niall a demure look. “Are you offering?”

“Sadly, no, pickle breath,” Niall answers.

“My mum’s coming to town,” Zayn admits in a rush. “She’s bringing the girls and my grandma, too.”

Niall perks up. Then, looking at the flustered expression on Zayn’s face, Niall’s stomach sinks. “They’re coming today, aren’t they? Zayn. Our apartment looks like Harry decorated it.”

“ _I_ look like Harry dressed _me,_ ” Zayn says, while Niall hops off his bed and starts rummaging through the cabinets beneath the sink for the industrial size garbage bags. Zayn shreds them and puts them on the floor to protect it from paint sometimes. “What are you doing with those?” Zayn asks, following Niall into the kitchen.

“Cleaning,” Niall says. His room is usually meticulous but Zayn’s not so picky, and Niall gave up on picking up after him the last time he accidentally threw away the sketches for Zayn’s mixed media arts final. “You know, that thing you do when family visits so that the girls don’t catch, like, smallpox.”

Zayn rushes forward to stop Niall throwing away their collection of beer bottles. They’ve got them lined up on the windowsill in the kitchen so that when the sun sets and sunlight streaks through the glasses, the floor is marked with a mosaic of green and gold and red light, like stained glass. It looks kind of shitty except at sunset, though.

“Smallpox isn’t a thing anymore,” Zayn says, gently easing Niall’s talon-like grip off of the trash bag. “Besides, if you’re here, they’ll be too busy cooing over you to even care what the apartment looks like. _Oh, Niall, how are your classes going? And your fancy internship? Your parents must be so proud of the success you’re going to be,_ ” Zayn puts on a shoddy copy of his sister’s voice. “Not like our Zaynie, who’s got no prospects and will probably be a washed up art teacher in a year and a half.”

Niall puts his hands on his shoulders and Zayn moves in for a hug. Like muscle memory, Niall hugs him back. Zayn’s a little like one of his own iron sculptures; he looks so delicate, but really, that’s the art of him. In reality, he’s so tough. Niall cups the back of his shaved head. “I still don’t know what to wear,” Zayn finally says through a mouthful of Niall’s hair.

“Pickle breath,” Niall grimaces, letting him go. He leads Zayn to his room, where he finds the nice black button-up he wore the interview for his bartending gig. It’s Niall’s go-to “dressy without being fancy” shirt, and Zayn wears it well, like he does everywhere. Maddening, he is.  

“Good lad,” Zayn says, mussing Niall’s hair. He takes a totally obvious whiff of Niall’s collar, probably smelling his aftershave. He looks at ease in an instant. “You know,” Zayn starts, “I don’t think our place looks all that bad.” He puts his arm around Niall’s shoulders and gently steers him back out to the living room. “Just looks like home to me.”

Niall aims a critical eye at their concave couch, and the window with the shutters that won’t go down all the way, and the rug with the beer stain on. Zayn’s right. It does look like home.

Zayn tightens his arm around Niall’s neck so he can pull him in for a kiss to the side of his head. “Besides,” he says lightly, “we’re just meeting them for dinner, baby.”

Niall has one shining moment of total relief. Then he socks Zayn in the arm and goes to brush his teeth. Just for that, he’s going to let Zayn’s family fawn over him all they want. Zayn hangs in the doorway to watch Niall brush and wash his face, Niall’s cheeks pinking up from the cold water.

When Zayn’s phone buzzes that his family’s pulling into town, they walk to the bus stop together. Zayn loops his arm around Niall’s shoulders and Niall just leans into him, smelling cigarette smoke, burnt popcorn, and home. And family.


	3. chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niall takes Zayn home to Portland on Easter break.

“It’s going to be fine,” Niall says, patting Zayn’s hand clumsily where it’s clamped around the armrest.

“That’s easy for you to say, you’re sitting next to the emergency exit. You’re first one off when this thing goes bottom-up and we all die.”

Niall laughs, partly because it’s a little funny, partly out of exasperation. No matter how many times Niall tells Zayn that Louis was joking about the plane going upside down thing, he won’t believe him. “I offered to switch you seats, do you want my seat?”

“No,” Zayn says darkly. “If the pressure inside the plane explodes or whatever, I want your skinny ass first one out. Bird caught in the engine, I don’t know. Poor bird. You did this to me.”

“I invited you home to Portland for Easter break, I don’t think I hatched some plot to get you killed in an airplane accident.”

Niall strokes his thumb over the top of Zayn’s hand. The tendons in the back of his hand stand out so sharply, and the muscle in his jaw flexes over and over again like he’s Harry chewing gum, or a cow chewing cud. Niall’s maybe watched Harry eat too many times. There’s something grossly fascinating about it, like a really fucked up episode of Hannibal. Or worse, when Harry’s eating with slack-jawed inattention while watching Hannibal. Sick bastard. 

The woman behind them heaves a heavy sigh, so Niall and Zayn shove their heads together to peep through the gap between their seats. The woman, a middle-aged lady in a housedress with a cat in a tiny cage on her lap, sighs again, this time even more gustily than before.

“See? People keep breathing all the air and the plane’s gonna explode like a can of pop,” Zayn says, his eyes narrowed at Niall and his voice much too loud for her not to have heard.

Niall just clucks his tongue like he does with Theo when the two year-old gets distracted trying to have a Google Hangout with him, because Google is free and Skype is not. Also, because the baby is two years old and two year-olds aren’t known for their lengthy attention spans.

It’s one of Niall’s favorite things about Theo, that he can just get bored with Niall and wander away and Niall can follow along with whatever new game Theo wants to play. It takes away all the anxiety of Niall having to come up with a game for him, although Theo does love it when Niall blows bubbles for him. No matter how hard he tries, his mouth always ends up sticky with bubble liquid.

Niall reaches over and unclicks Zayn’s seat belt, so Zayn fists his hand in Niall’s shirt so tight Niall could swear he hears the cotton ripping. Niall undoes his seatbelt too and fits the two belts together. They’re skinny enough to make it work, which is a lucky thing.

“There,” Niall says. “We’ll go down together.”

Zayn’s eyes have gone all soft and fond. “My hero,” he says, patting Niall on the cheek. His eyes linger on Niall’s mouth, which is – new. Not new, maybe. No, new. Definitely new.

First time Niall ever met Zayn was at a frat party freshman year and Zayn was totally wasted. Niall found him puking his guts up in the front yard and pulled him inside for a glass of water and a couple of stolen Midol that Niall found in the bathroom cabinet, and then he’d left Zayn passed out in the bathtub to go back to his game of beer pong.

Zayn had looked at him the same way then, though. Not just like he was grateful to Niall for finding him a place to crash where he wouldn’t wake up to fire ants crawling around inside his shirt, but something else, too. Something sharp-edged and hot-feeling, the way it feels to step into a steaming hot shower after having been outside in the cold for a long, long time. Like he’s a little frozen, too, and he might just melt away under the spray.

Niall swallows. Zayn’s eyes flick down to his mouth then back up to his eyes. Niall can see himself in Zayn’s pupils, dark and hungry-looking. Harry regularly puts his mouth on Niall like he wants to swallow him whole. Zayn looks at Niall like he wants to seep into his bones, fuse with him. A blush starts working its way up from Niall’s chest, staining his cheeks and ears a bright cherry red.

“Look like your dad,” Zayn says softly. His eyes have lost that sharp, hot edge, which is maybe more like his warm hands on Niall’s cool skin than a hot shower. He’s not said anything out of character but it feels a little like Zayn’s letting Niall off the hook, somehow.

“Don’t hit on my dad,” Niall says. His voice, at least, sounds totally normal.

“I’ll leave that to Harry,” Zayn answers, sounding terribly amused.

The flight from Seattle to Portland is a short one, but Zayn still manages to conk out for a solid fifteen minutes before he picks his head up off Niall’s chest and kicks both his toothpick legs out like Niall kicking off the wall of a swimming pool. Luckily, there’s no one in the aisle. 

Niall slides his hand down round Zayn’s chest, holding him against his chest. Zayn’s heart pounds against Niall’s palm like a racehorse, or Louis’s annoying fists prodding him into a Halo tournament whenever he gets into Zayn’s Adderall.

“Drowning,” Zayn mumbles.

“Figured,” Niall says. Zayn curls his hands around Niall’s forearm and even though they’ll start landing procedure soon and they’ll have to unbuckle themselves, Niall lets Zayn nod off again. Maybe he’ll wake up from a better dream this time.

Zayn manages landing procedure just fine, and he pulls out the old “darling only boy child” schtick that Liam does too with Niall’s dad, who gruffly invites him fishing the next day.

“You do realize you’ll have to get up at, like, four o’clock in the morning, right?” Niall asks. He leans out of the bathroom and can just about see Zayn splayed across Niall’s childhood bed, his lanky body somehow managing to take up the whole room. “He’s so much bigger than himself, Zaynie,” Liam observed once, stoned. “Like Billy Batson, you know. Just,” he clicked his fingers, “ _Shazam!_ ” Harry’d laughed so hard he spurted beer out of his nose.

“Are you kidding?” Zayn asks, lifting his head off the pillow. His eyes find Niall’s with unerring accuracy.

“Serious as sin,” says Niall, and spits his toothpaste into the sink. He flips the bathroom light and pads across the hall into his old room. Zayn doesn’t move, so Niall pushes one of his arms over and climbs into bed beside him.

Zayn doesn’t move till Niall’s settled, and then it’s mostly to melt into his side. He’s like a lump of cheese, Zayn, always trying to schmooze all over everything else. Niall tells him so.

“And you’re my sweet bread,” Zayn answers. He wraps his arm around Niall’s waist and pulls himself soft and angular and firm against Niall’s side. He hasn’t take his jeans off yet and the fabric drags across Niall’s legs. “My delicious cheesy cinnamon sugar pretzel.”

“Please stop,” Niall says. He doesn’t mean it. Zayn’s hand slides up to his chest, then down his stomach. He slips his hand under the hem of Niall’s – well, technically it was Zayn’s – tatty old intramural dodgeball t-shirt.

Zayn’s fingers card through the thin patch of hair on Niall’s chest. “My mouthful of funnel cake.”

“If you’re hungry we have, like, a whole fridge full of food.”

Zayn just hums, the corners of his mouth curling up in a smile. He’s so beautiful. He loves Niall so much. “You don’t have to worry,” Zayn says quietly. “I’m not making a move on you.”

Niall lies still for a beat, then two. “Why not?” he whispers. His eyes haven’t adjusted to the room enough for him to make out Zayn’s expression, not when it’s so often such a mild thing. He’s not even sure he wants to see. 

“‘Cos I’m waiting for you to make the first move,” Zayn says. He’s very definitely curled against Niall’s side, all loose-limbed and bony and pliable, somehow, too; a study in contradictions. 

Back when Zayn and Louis were hooking up, Louis had stumbled out of Zayn’s bedroom one morning and fumbled himself a seat at the bar. Niall served him a cup of tea in one of their chipped dollar store mugs because, well, he looked like he needed it. And it was the only kind of mug they had.

“He’s definitely the best-looking guy I’ve ever hooked up with,” Louis’d said, his mouth stuffed full of Niall’s toast. Niall got the bread back out from the cabinet above the coffeepot with the leaky water reservoir. “But he’s too soft. He’ll definitely fall in love with me, and I’ll break his heart.”

Niall watched Louis sip his tea and eat his toast.

“So really,” Niall asked, “you’re afraid of falling in love with him?”

Louis nodded pitifully. Niall sent him home after that and dropped onto Zayn’s bed next to him, even though he was probably naked and the room smelled like sex and Niall was meant to be heading into work soon. He broke the news gently as he could. “Louis’s gone.”

It took Zayn a long, long moment with his face buried in the pillow to respond. “Well,” he’d said. “We should definitely stay friends with him. He’s got a key to all the arcade games at the mall.”

And that’d settled that.

Niall still thinks about it sometimes, though, when the boys have all come round and none of them will shut the fuck up. He thinks about it now, too, with Zayn curled around him like Niall’s his favorite teddy bear and there’s nothing at all between them but a few layers of clothes. No secrets or lies, none of the stuff that usually complicates everything. No secret resentments, at least that Niall knows of. It’s surprising and freeing and unutterably relaxing to know that Zayn is only, precisely himself with Niall. And that Niall is, too, with Zayn. It feels like so much to lose. 

“Well,” says Niall. “I’m waiting for me, too.”

If Zayn could purr, he’d probably be purring right now. As it is, he settles for threading his leg between Niall’s and laying his heavy head on Niall’s shoulder. “Let’s watch people do voiceovers on their pets till it’s time to go fishing,” he yawns in Niall’s ear.

So Niall queues up a promising playlist full of baby animals and props his phone up on his stomach. He curls his hand around the back of Zayn’s head, holding him close. Nine videos later, Zayn sleepily murmurs, “Love you.” 

“Love you too,” Niall answers, and YouTube loads the next video, and the night drags on not slowly enough.


End file.
